


Ruminations Over Bloody Bullets

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [37]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Blood, accelerated healing, planet metaverse: invasion, s6 e3, using knives to pick bullets out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Bruno thinks about recent events as he picks automatic machine gun bullets out of the uncomfortable spots they've lodged themselves in
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Ruminations Over Bloody Bullets

Bruno bowed his head silently as he worked with the knife.

It was hardly the first time he’d had to go fishing for bullets in his own skin. Hell, it wasn’t even the first time he’d had to go fishing after…well. After. Still didn’t make it any more pleasant, of course, but it was better than leaving the damn things in there and having to slice back down to them later when they started moving around and doing damage internally. At this point the pain of digging out bullets was an old friend; at least now the injuries were closing behind the red-hot streaks of the knife, saving him the time it would take to bandage himself up.

The knife didn’t slow in his hands, but the thought nagged at him. With no particular body armor Bruno had taken two full rounds from fully automatic weapons fire. By all rights, he should be dead; he’d done it to other men often enough to know exactly how much damage two full rounds did to the unprotected human body, yet here he was picking bullets out like nothing more than particularly troublesome ticks. It said something about the last few months, about the journey he’d taken to get back of which Joe’s was simply the very last leg, that he’d gotten used to things like this.

Now, in the familiar surroundings of his home metaverse - he couldn’t explain what it was that made it different from all the other metaverses he’d ended up in, only that there was something about the surroundings that said home even though he’d never been to this specific place before - it was glaringly obvious, a brilliant neon sign to how much he’d changed. He’d left this metaverse an old man with a trick knee and come back to it a less-old man who took two fully automatic bursts to the soft and fleshy bits and kept moving. It felt….surreal. He was an old man with too many years under his belt, and he’d just been trying to do right by his granddaughter; now he had the power - and, if Rhodes was to be believed, the responsibility - to do right by the whole world.

The thought was unsettling; not the responsibility, no - he’d saved the world before, from a variety of home-grown threats, though most of those missions would never make the history books. It was the power that didn’t sit right. Bruno was a strong man, stronger than most of the people around him since the age of fourteen, and the years had only brought more strength in the form of finesse and weapons training; anyone could be as strong, learn the weapons systems. But healing so fast you had to re-open the skin with a knife to get the bullets out mere minutes after being shot? Being strong enough to pull open several-ton steel blast doors?

That was something else.

Bruno shook his head as the last of the blood-slicked bullets dropped to the floor, the injuries they’d inflicted closing even as he watched. He could feel eyes on him, and when he glanced up he met the wide-eyed gaze of Mac McPhernon as the boy clutched a wired detonator Leibowitz-O'Kelley was busily fiddling with. The boy looked away almost immediately, his eyes flashing down to what Leibowitz-O'Kelley was doing as the older man continued a quiet monologue on the niceties of hardwired det cord, and Bruno was reminded for an overwhelming moment of the Jaxun kid. How, even with the sunglasses, the kid never used to look anyone in the face if he could help it.

That had changed, sometime during their time in ARENA. Bruno couldn’t say exactly when, but when they’d begun their journey home - Maddox’s final journey home - Crash Jaxun had been different. He’d stood taller, been more willing to meet peoples’ eyes, given directions with more authority; in short, he’d become the sort of man Bruno was glad to follow, the sort of man that should make any parent proud. Given what the general had done in Jarbridge, however, Bruno had his doubts as to whether Jaxun was the kind of man who would recognize that his boy had become a man in his own right, and a hint of trepidation followed any thoughts of what Crash would do when his father attempted to use him again.

But that was a problem for later.

Bruno rotated his shoulder, feeling the chip in the socket where one particularly difficult bullet had wedged itself fill in and flatten until his should no longer clicked oddly in the middle of the motion. The first few turns had clicked audibly, though, and Mac had flinched with each noise. The kid hadn’t been overly comfortable with Bruno the first time they’d met - the bombastic car chase had seen to that - but he’d been friendly enough on their trip in the stagecoach-submarine-whatever. Apparently watching someone take two bursts of full auto to the torso and then pick it all out afterward had spooked him, though, and he’d moved so that Patric was between him and Bruno.

Bruno had let him; people had been skittish with him his entire life, he knew how not to take it personally. Granted, it was usually more for his stature than for his knifework, but the principle remained the same. The kid would have to come to his own terms with what he’d seen, which could take a while. Bruno wasn’t certain if it was the time he’d spent with Crash or if he was just getting sentimental in his old age, but the McPhernon kid had far more to cope with than an old dog with older tricks trying to pass on useful tips and tricks. He’d seen the folder in Leibowitz-O'Kelley’s go-bag; the Irishman wasn’t a great believer in hardcopy reading, so the file didn’t belong to him, and the kid flinched just a bit every time his hand brushed it. Bruno had confirmed his suspicions when he’d gone for the suppressed MP9 - the name on the folder was Maddox McPhernon.

Maddox McPhernon. Another name on a long list Bruno carried beside his heart. Too long of a list, no matter how he looked at it, yet he’d never let a name be left off and forgotten. He was a survivor, in a line of work that didn’t make for too many of those and made dying for a cause all too easy, and a lot of the names on his list existed only there. So many of them had been redacted, censored, edited, even straight-up erased from history that only Jaxun might know even half if he started reciting the names, but Bruno refused to let the memories go. Maddox Mcphernon was the latest, and while Bruno had never worked with her directly he’d spoken with her a time or two while they were all under the thumb of T.O.M. She’d been unusually optimistic for someone in her line of work, and their chats had left him feeling more determined than ever to find his granddaughter and do right by her.

Thinking of Andi had Bruno tightening his jaw. Bruno had been chosen to come back to the home front because he had the most contacts in the right places, people who’d be willing to tell him what the world really looked like underneath all the media and sugarcoating spin the government was putting out. He was the best one to know if there was anything the rest of them needed to be back here for; he hadn’t found any argument against that line of reasoning, and so he had gone. Now, with war on the horizon and enemy boots already firmly on the ground, he found himself at once wishing Andi was here where he could keep her safe and glad she wasn’t here so the enemy couldn’t harm her.

As Leibowitz-O'Kelley and the kid finished rearranging the wiring on the det cord, Bruno set his mouth in a thin line and stepped up next to John Stone. Whatever happened, he’d make this world _safe_ again for his granddaughter.

Or die trying.


End file.
